Mardi Gras Recap: Part 2

Our games on Saturday were relatively uneventful. All of the handlers, myself included, had a terrible game against Arkansas. That poor play resulted in a loss, but the other three games that day were all wins. Personally, I finally got into a groove with my new backhand break. I tried to make some changes to my throwing motion and release point over the course of the fall. I guess it's not the greatest thing in the world that I'm still changing my throwing form even after playing for so long, but I'm really happy with this new-found effectiveness with the backhand break. My confidence in that throw has never been higher, and that definitely turned into over-confidence on day two. I'm going to stop short of saying how this works into our strategy, for fear of giving away too much in advance of the HOTI and Roll Call tournaments.

The fields for Saturday's games were terrible. The ground was complete slop, and some local asshat decided it was a good idea to drive donuts on parts of the fields. That resulted in huge mud-filled gullies that covered one entire end-zone. I must admit, I still find things that surprise me in this game, and this next bit is a perfect example. What seemed to work the best in the muck was -- get this -- the handler weave. I don't even know why it worked so well, and it wasn't even my idea originally to call it. But damn, we pwnt the shit out of teams with that handler weave while we played on that messy field.

Also, before I get to far-afield chronologically, my team still persists in going to fucking McDonalds for breakfast. Every time I bring up the idiocy of this habit, I'm always told the same thing: it's the only place to get breakfast quickly. That explanation is complete garbage, since you can just as easily find a local grocery store and buy some fruit or something. There's no way I'm changing IU's McShit habit, at least not on a team-wide level. I mean I could be a dick about it and start giving orders and whatnot, but a) people probably wouldn't listen and b) I need to save my kicking and screaming for other more important things. That said, I went off on my own excursion to the grocery store only to come back to the McTransFats and find no one but the three guys in my car, who were just standing around waiting for me. Because it's clearly not important to call me when the whole caravan is going to the fields and I have no directions. Idiots.

I mention my excursion to the grocery store because there I bought a half-gallon of orange juice. I subsequently drank the entire thing over the course of the games. It was a bad idea, admittedly, to chug OJ on the sidelines between points. My teammates all cringed when they saw me do this, but somehow I didn't get sick. I am proud of myself. Also, there were crazy fire ants all over the place. I still have some almost-healed welts around my ankles from where those little fuckers got a piece of me. Never experienced that before.

Anyways, the real story I want to get to here is the story of Bourbon Street. There was some pretty massive confusion about how we were going to get to New Orleans (about an hour away). We needed to figure out who was going to drive and whatnot. It was already fairly late when these decisions were finally made and we haphazardly set off from the hotel. I hadn't been drinking yet, but I fully intended to do so once I got there. Little did I realize what I was getting myself into.

You do not fully comprehend the meaning of the word "clusterfuck" until you have been to Bourbon Street. The street itself is extremely narrow (those of you in D.C., think about the width of 22nd street in the F/G/H Street area). The whole street is just packed with people. The word I keep using to describe the surrounds was a "crush." It was a huge crush of people. Not like the Durham Fair or FallFest or Spring Fling on the quad or whatever. The entire street was storefront-to-storefront people -- very little room to maneuver and whole clumps of gawkers standing in the middle of the street at every balcony. A complete nightmare to try and navigate. No sooner had we turned onto Bourbon Street then two dudes got into a fight. A punch went whizzing by my shoulder and landed on some dude walking next to me. This was going to be awesome...

Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong wrong WRONG! Within a half-hour of arriving, I felt something warm and liquid land on my leg and give me a very unpleasant feeling. I turned around to see some clown, college age, bent over still holding his cup of hooch, and a hefty splotch of orange-colored vomit seeping into the back of my pant-leg. After a long stare-down with the teetering culprit, the booter's accomplice managed to squeeze out a "These things happen, it's Mardi Gras man!!" I'm glad I didn't throw a punch or anything because there were so many cops. Vertical would later discover this fact when he showed his bare ass for some beads and got roughly pulled aside by The Fuzz.

So that started my night off just fine. Our guys and girls were moving along in a big group down Bourbon Street so slowly that Paul Prudhomme almost certainly could have motored circles around our group. I was already sick of being there, my pants having been soiled and my desire to drink nearly gone. The final nail in the coffin of my desire to have fun was when I got caught up in a crush of people moving down the street. All of a sudden, I found myself surrounded on all sides by hordes of drunken idiots, all believing that the harder they pushed, the faster this would all go. It got to the point where I was no longer in control of where I was headed, since everyone around me was pushing and shoving in the same direction.

I was NOT okay with that. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure that what I subsequently experienced was an anxiety attack. All of a sudden I was hypersensitive to the various loud noises and getting pushed by other people. All I wanted to do was leave. I had at this point left the group so that I could go to the periphery of the street and try to calm down, to find some open space in which to stand and collect myself. Then, to keep myself occupied, I wanted to try and remain in sight of our group the whole time without actually being within the group. Some of my teammates expressed concern after the fact, saying that I looked as if I would fight the next person who looked at me funny. I don't think I would have done that, but I certainly was flipping the fuck out. I never want to have an experience like that again.

The one bright spot of the evening was that all of a sudden everyone was looking up and cheering. On the balcony overhead was none other than Hulk Hogan. He was throwing some pretty good beads and TardBang actually got his hands on some of them. So that was the good thing that happened.

Oh, there was another good thing too. At some point, TardBang really wanted this one set of beads that someone was waving around on some balcony. They wouldn't give it to him for showing any male equipment, so enter McNoob, one of the Janes (our women's team), willing to do show some nurp or something and get the good beads. Previously, I had noticed some supercreep a little ways away from our group. This guy was like 40ish, balding, standing around by himself with a video camera. Every time it looked like a girl was about to show her jubblies, this guy would swoop into the crowd to get a good view. Well, as soon as McNoob stepped up to the curb, some other similar supercreep came in and started focusing in his digital camera.

This was not okay with me, nor was it okay with one of the other women. So we confronted the guy. I covered up the lens with my hand, and together we gave him a pretty vicious tongue-lashing. We told him we didn't want him taking pictures of our friend so he could go home and jerk off to it later. He said something about "what, and girls showing their breasts for $0.05 plastic beads isn't stupid?" Seeing as that had nothing to do with what we had just said, the two of us just fired off a salvo of verbal barbs and prevented him from getting close to our group or to McNoob. I kept pawing at his camera too every time he tried to take a photo. He said that it was "kids like [us]" who were "[ruining] Mardi Gras for the rest of [them, i.e. supercreeps]," and walked away. I was proud of having done my good deed for the day, and McNoob succeeded in getting the good beads. Wins all around.

Finally everyone decided to leave. We didn't get back until some absurdly late time, like 3am or something. As we were all getting ready for bed, we hear a knock on our door, and in comes Vertical, buttass naked, blitzed, and wanting to wrestle TardBang. After prying the two ex-wrestlers apart, we all dragged Vertical back to his room, still sans clothes but at least subdued for the moment. That ended day one of games and Bourbon Street.

Other than getting puked on and getting caught in a human meatflow, the worst thing was seeing my teammates reduced to such a primal level walking around in search of boobies. Much like Vegas last year, it was just depressing to see people I know so well -- people who are more or less intelligent individuals -- craning their necks all night and waiting for random girls on balconies to show some side-boob. Maybe this wouldn't be a big deal if they had spent a half-hour or an hour trying to get a glimpse of some funbags (they're only human after all), but this is what the whole group did for, like, three hours. It makes you think, being like, "These are my friends? How embarrassing..." because they voluntarily put themselves on the same level as every other community college dropout who's walking around Bourbon Street spewing chunks onto unsuspecting people's pant-legs.

That's all for part two. Needless to say, I never want to go back to Bourbon Street ever again, at least not on such an absurd weekend. Pandemonium is not my cup of tea. Anyhow, that's all I got, and part three won't be too long in coming, and probably won't be as lengthy as this one. It will encompass Sunday's play and the ride home. TTFN.

Mardi Gras Recap: Part 1

I realize this is somewhat late in coming, but I thought I'd at least write up some things about the Mardi Gras tournament.

To start, it is a long, long drive to get to Louisiana. Of course, as we were leaving, there was a major storm system weaving through the whole Midwest. So basically from Terre Haute to Memphis we were going between 45 and 60 mph. Faster than that simply was not possible because of snow accumulation and poor plowing. So that slowed down our overnight journey considerably. On the way I learned that Vertical and TardBang, having grown up in the same area, were once part of a pig-wrestling contest, in which they placed second. To quote TardBang, "we dominated that pig!" Of course that was said with a little southern twang/flair which made it all the funnier to hear. Their hometown is 20 minutes north-west of Bloomington and apparently, in that town's fair, they have an event where you're in a pit with a lot of mud and a little pedestal in the middle. You're supposed to wrestle the pig, tie it up (?) and hoist it onto the platform as fast as possible. So yes. They dominated that pig.

I would like to take a moment to recognize TardBang as one of the best copilots I've ever had in a car ride. The navigation part was super easy, but this guy was a champ in terms of keeping me awake, making good conversation, and taking care of copilot duties like music selection, opening my soda bottles, fiddling with the heat, etc. etc. Well done, sir.

And of course, it wouldn't be a tournament without my car having some kind of trouble. This time, like the Missouri tournament in November, the culprit was yet another faulty tire. All of a sudden, somewhere near the exit to Tickfaw, LA (yes folks, TICKFAW), the already-shitty roadway that is Route 12 started to feel a whole lot shittier. This was not particularly alarming at first because hell, the road is already riddled with potholes and cracks and whatnot. But, sure enough, before I knew it, I was riding on my rim. We pulled over to the side of the road, and the tire corpse comes flying off the wheel, landing in a pool of stagnant water, smoking. Nice. We're in the middle of bumfuck Louisiana, having just driven 14 hours through a crazy snowstorm, and now the four of us were just standing around on the side of the road, gradually losing our hearing from the whoosh of passing tractor trailers. TardBang ran down the highway to get a closer look at a distant signpost to figure out where the fuck we were.

My car is so awesome that it has wheel locks, which are essentially odd-shaped bolts on the rims so that people can't yoink them easily. Each wheel has one, including the one that got pwnt, so of course that bolt won't come off. You have to use a special socket in conjunction with the tire-iron in order to get it off. I only have one of those clown tire-irons that looks like an L, rather than one of the good tire irons that looks like an X. So basically, when I tried to take off the wheel lock, the socket would just slip off to the side rather than actually torque the bolt. Eventually, a cop came and used his good tire iron. He was very helpful, and this was one of the few instances where I actually appreciated traffic cops.

After calling Pep Boys and yelling at them about their crappy tire, we determined that it was okay to pop on the donut and drive to Baton Rouge, which was another forty miles or so. We got there safely, and the Pep Boys was actually within walking distance of our incredibly seedy hotel. Of course, what would any tournament be without a ridiculous hotel. This place was absurd. Example. Some of our teammates saw a group of Mexican men hanging out on the balcony laughing, smoking, and hooping it up, while a naked woman lay on the bed in full view through the open door. Clearly, a bunch of Mexicans were riding train on some girl and proud of it. Additionally, on the second night, one of our guys was napping on the floor when he woke up and heard some noises. He looked around the room and some random guy was rummaging through our stuff. He apparently made off with one kid's phone and possibly Boner's wallet (though he has a Tim-Naylor-like propensity for losing things, so the wallet may be anywhere). Anyways, yeah, the hotel was weird to say the least.

We went to the tournament-sponsored party/dinner on Friday evening and enjoyed some free cajun food and local good spirit. This was probably the drunkest I ever got at a tournament party (not that drunk really but still much more drunk than I've ever been at a tournament party). We boat-raced the shit out of pretty much every team there. Except when it came to boat-racing Arkansas, who were in our pool and could actually roll with us boat-race-wise. Basically, an IU alum who was playing with Texas decided to step in for a cameo and ruined our shit. We were undefeated prior to that, with a finishing differential of probably about one-and-a-half cups on average. We may be a little iffy on the field at times, but damn we've got five clowns who can put down the "nectar of the nitwit" like nobody's business. I am proud to be part of that unit, despite my well-publicized disdain for non-high-class suds.

I'm going to leave off there for now, since I have some materials to procure for our prank war with the Calamity Janes (our women's team aka Chlamydia Janes aka Calamity Cumdumpsters). This may even be a three-parter, but I'll try to write them up rapid-fire over today and tomorrow.

Weird party

Last night we had a party at the women's team's captain's house (wow, lots of modifiers...). The theme was that all the Mama?s (the guys team) had to dress up like the Janes (the women's team) and vice versa. Fittingly, I went as the women's team captain. Well, I didn't really want to half-ass my costume so I procured a bunch of her stuff, including trademark tall socks and orange skirt. I also decided it was a good idea to wear makeup. This was not a good idea, but rather a very very bad idea. That will be discussed later.

The night began with some gentle pregaming/costume prep. I only put on makeup on the condition that another guy on the team did it, so one of the girls helped us both out by putting on eyeshadow and mascara. It was weird. Then I blew up some party balloons that I bought earlier in the day at Wal-Mart, using the balloons to make myself quite shapely (just like the women's team captain). After a quick donut fight in the kitchen, most of us were all ready to roll over to the party house. Just as a disclaimer, the donuts had been sitting on the counter so long they had essentially petrified. No edible donuts were harmed. I got a big chunk in the beer pong cups so I was happy.

Then, off to the party, and doing party things. My boobs lasted a lot longer than I expected them to, but finally fell victim to an assault by Novosaurus and the person I dressed up as. I got motorboated a lot of times, and had to yell a lot of "no means no!" As the party wound down, I tried to get a lot of the makeup off, to no avail. I did manage to get a lot of soap in my eyes though, but it didn't matter because I was drunk (fans will recall that I know from previous experience that getting stuff off the eye area while drunk hurts far less than when you're sober).

Things start to get a little hazy after the boobs got popped. Some small firecrackers were set off in close proximity to certain individual's posteriors, some gin was drunk (oh yes it was), some n00bz were yelled at. All in all pretty standard. As the night was winding down, a bunch of the rookies were canoodling with the older girls upstairs. I went up there to moderate, and eventually one of our freshmen ended up dragged into a bedroom. Well, most people just left, but my policy for parties that are far away from everything is "no child left behind," especially when freshmen are involved. So I sat on the stairs for a while, minding my own business, then I went upstairs to make sure the kid didn't need to set up a quick escape or anything. Called his phone, it was off, so I shrugged, went downstairs, put on the layers I had stuffed into my drinking bag, sent the kid a text saying "you're on your own," and set off for home.

Of course, my keys and jacket were still at the place where we pregamed, but I didn't realize that until I was much closer to my own house than the location of my keys. Furthermore, Novosaurus was the only one with keys to the place, since the other denizen of that particular locale had lost his keys. So I had to track him down at a restaurant downtown, go back to the pregaming place, get my keys, and then trudge all the way back home. It was about 15 degrees out too, but I didn't much notice this. Additionally, I still had a lot of makeup on and looked like a complete clown.

Before going to bed, I once again tried to get all of the makeup off. That was unsuccessful, since I woke up this morning still looking like a goddamned creepo. In the shower this morning I said "fuckit," mashed a bunch of soap in my eyes and went to town. And by went to town I mean put myself in a world of hurt. I even used some vodka-soaked q-tips to try and get all of it off. My eyes still look a little "sassy" (to borrow an expression from The Wang) but I think all the shit is finally off. You can add ridiculous makeup as reason # 1,472,345 why I'm glad I'm a dude. And that's the closest I will EVER get to cross-dressing...

Now I want to go to the gym. But I keep looking at myself in the mirror and thinking that I still kind of look like I have makeup on. I am not sure I can show myself in public until I am sure I don't look like a transvestite.